Endless Chain (37 page)

“And he went from being your uncle to your husband.” It was not a question, although Sam was surprised at the large difference in their ages.

“After my parents died, I gave up my plans for medical school in the U.S., of course. The money was no longer there, and I had Ramon to think of. Then Gabrio stepped in and persuaded me to move to Guatemala City, where he had a flourishing medical practice with a specialty in public health. He wanted me to attend medical school at the
Universidad de Francisco Marroquin.
He promised to help find proper schools and care for Ramon. He believed I would make a fine doctor and, by service to our country, honor my parents.”

“It sounds like a good plan.” Sam hesitated, wondering if he had a right to ask a question. But Elisa answered before he could.

“No, I can see what you’re thinking, but Gabrio had no plans except to help me achieve what my parents had hoped I would. The difference in our ages bothered him more than it bothered me. It took a very long time for him to admit he wanted to marry me. By then he had become a real father to Ramon, and that was one of the reasons I loved him.”

Sam could see how the relationship had developed, but he couldn’t help wondering, had the circumstances been different if Gabrio would have simply remained her father’s good friend.

“He was the best doctor I ever knew. Gabrio would take the practices of Mayan people he treated and expand on them, so they knew he respected their culture. So many people had been displaced and had no homes. They wandered in the mountains, afraid to settle, afraid their villages and crops would be burned or, worse, that they, too, would be massacred. Gabrio went to them. He took help to them. He cared in a way too few others did.”

Sam clearly heard the love in her voice, as well as the voice inside himself that protested it. But he had no right or reason to be jealous of a dead man. “You were right before. He sounds like a hero.”

“A hero, yes, but not a saint. He had faults, and I learned to know them well. He was so driven to help others that he rarely took time for himself. And he never quite overcame the difference in our ages. In some ways he acted more like a father than a lover. On one hand, he wanted me to succeed as a doctor and achieve any potential I had, on the other, he wanted to protect me from the harshest realities of our lives. And in the end, protecting me kept me from having a voice in what happened next.”

She pushed her chair back and stood. “You haven’t eaten a bite.”

“Does it matter?”

She folded her arms at her waist, as if she was still cold. He stood, too. “Let me get you a blanket. You’re shivering.”

She didn’t protest. “But, Sam, you must be exhausted. You need to sleep.”

He gave a half smile. “What are the chances? Go in the den and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right there.”

He returned with a colorful wool afghan that normally graced the foot of his bed. It was ragged and worn, but it had kept him company through the long nights of adolescence.

Elisa was huddled on the sofa, and he draped the afghan on her lap, tucking it in around her. “My aunt crocheted this out of scraps of yarn when I was ten. I’ve never been able to make myself get rid of it.”

She tugged it higher and buried her arms beneath it. “It’s an old friend. You’re lucky to have it.”

He went back into the kitchen for their coffee, topping it off with more. Then he settled beside her, but not too close. She needed room in every conceivable way. “You don’t have anything left from
your
childhood, do you?”

“I hope I have the most important thing.”

“Memories?”

“My brother.”

“You haven’t said enough about him.”

“You know about the massacres in my country? You’ve said as much.”

He knew. Guatemala, like other countries in Latin America, had an unfortunate history of experiments with real democracy interspersed with periods of harsh military rule. Under the latter, anyone suspected of left-wing activities was jailed or murdered. Left-wing was interpreted loosely enough to include anyone who advocated human rights, the organization of unions, assistance to the poor.

In the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, government in Guatemala had been completely dominated by the country’s army, and guerilla groups had formed to challenge them. As the rebel forces retreated into the Mayan highlands for cover, the indigenous people, whether they were involved with the guerillas or not, were rooted out by the army, their villages destroyed and thousands murdered.

He condensed the facts. “I know that in Guatemala, the army’s policy of murder and mayhem was called the broom, because the army swept through the whole country, clearing away all dissent.”

“
La escoba.
Yes. It is surprising, as I said, that, as outspoken as my parents were, they were not killed earlier. But they had friends who protected them. My father had received international acclaim for his cooperatives. It would not have been simple to make him disappear, as so many others did. And he was careful, a man who believed he knew friend from foe and how to play one against the other.”

“How does this relate to you, Elisa? Guatemala’s come a long way toward democracy since then. There’s been a civilian government in place for almost twenty years.”

“The year my parents died was a particularly terrible year for my country. Things had seemed better, then we took a turn back to bloodshed and violence. Once more, people who spoke out were murdered, intellectuals known outside Guatemala as well as Mayan villagers. There was a man named Martin Avila Morales who was rising in the political ranks, a close friend of my father’s, nearly as close as Gabrio. My father had information about one of those incidents in a village, important information that needed to reach the right people, so he went to Martin and recounted it. He was assured the information would be put to good use.”

Sam saw she was shivering and tucked the afghan tighter around her. “Drink some coffee.” He handed her the mug and watched her sip. “I gather this Morales was not a man to trust?”

“He is the most dangerous man I have ever known.
Un comodín,
something like what you call a chameleon, a man who changes with his environment, a man who can hide what he is, who is too often invisible to the naked eye. When my parents were killed, Martin attended their funeral and grieved publicly, as if he had lost his best friends. I had no reason to believe he hadn’t. Only Gabrio was suspicious, since he knew my father had given the information to Martin, but since he had no proof, he chose not to tell me his fears.”

Sam understood now what she had meant when she said Gabrio had protected her. “That was still a long time ago.”

“Yes, and perhaps it would have ended there if, a year before he died Gabrio had not begun to hear bits of information from people he treated in his clinics. I’ll make the story short. Little by little, piece by piece, Gabrio began to suspect Martin Avila Morales himself had been instrumental in a massacre at a village named Wakk’an where Gabrio had established a clinic. The killings took place in 1985. Martin was an officer in the army at that time, and that fact was well known. But we had always believed he was a voice of reason, a man who had been able to prevent bloodshed.”

She set down her coffee and shivered again, but this time Sam knew there was nothing he could do. There was no way to warm her. “Go on,” he encouraged.

She reached for his hands, and he gripped them.

“Guatemala began exhuming the sites of massacres eleven years ago. Forensic scientists from all over the world and hundreds of volunteers have come to help. It is necessary, to prove the scope of what happened, and to help the survivors and relatives of the dead move on with their lives. As Gabrio gathered information about Wakk’an and what had happened, he began to organize the exhumation of a mass grave on the square. Of course there was much resistance and many threats made. There always is. Many people want to forget what happened and move forward. And, of course, many of them prefer their own pasts and culpability not be questioned, not be exhumed, as it were, for the world to see.”

“And Martin Avila Morales was one of those?”

“Do you know that in 1996 the soldiers who participated in these horrors were given amnesty? It’s part of our National Reconciliation Law. For the most part they cannot be prosecuted for what they did, but Martin wanted a career in politics—in fact, he wants to be president one day soon. So even if he could not be tried, it was not in his interests to be identified with what happened in Wakk’an, and it was not in his interest to allow the exhumation to go forward. He came to Gabrio and asked him not to continue, giving excuses why it was not a good idea at the moment, but by then Gabrio had learned the final piece of the puzzle. Martin himself was the officer who had ordered and carried out this massacre, and Gabrio wanted to prove this.”

“Did you know?”

“Not then. Gabrio continued to protect me. I think he believed that if I didn’t know details, I was safer. He was almost certain at that point, I think, that Martin had been responsible, too, for the death of my parents. But he did not want me to know, to bring back those memories or put me in danger, until he had assembled his case and presented it to someone who would be able to help.”

Sam rubbed her hands. “When did you find out?”

“Ramon and I always accompanied Gabrio to the clinics. I worked side by side with him, and we thought it important for Ramon to be with us. He is good at many things, my brother, and I believe he would have followed in Gabrio’s footsteps and worked in public health. We could count on him to do things many boys his age would never be able to.

“Several weeks before the exhumation was to begin, Ramon and I were to accompany Gabrio to the mountains to work at one of the clinics. Afterward, when Ramon and I were back at home, Gabrio planned to join the others at the Wakk’an exhumation. But as the time came to leave, Gabrio began to make excuses. He did not want us to come for this reason and that—”

Her voice caught, and she brushed away a tear. “Gabrio and I had been fighting for weeks by then. He was never home, and I missed him. We were arguing constantly, too, about having a child. Ramon was nearly grown, my position at the hospital was well-established, and I wanted a baby. But Gabrio resisted. He cut short every conversation, made excuses to be gone. Now I know he was putting together his case against Martin, that he was assembling evidence, and even that he was afraid to have a child because it would make him more vulnerable.

“But I didn’t know these things then, and I was hurt and upset. When he asked me to stay in Guatemala City with Ramon, I balked. I thought he was trying to shut me out of his life even more. Also I knew Gabrio would not take care of himself, that he would work too hard unless I was there to insist. At the last minute I fell ill, and again he tried to make me stay home, but I refused. By then I was frantic. I sensed too much was wrong, and I didn’t want him out of my sight.”

“Elisa…” Sam held her hands against his cheeks.

She shook her head. “I’ll finish, then be done with this.”

“This is very hard, I know.”

“What do you remember reading about Gabrio’s murder?”

Sam had searched his memory since the moment at Tessa’s bedside when he had realized her identity, but his recall of the facts was sketchy. “Not much. He was murdered on a mountain road. Someone found his body the next day. You were reported to have been with him, but you were gone….” He hesitated too long.

She closed her eyes. “My fingerprints were on the gun.”

“Yes. I remember that much.”

“We were on our way to the clinic. We were late getting started because I was sick and not moving fast enough, and because Gabrio’s car was in the garage for repairs and at the last moment we had to take mine instead. Gabrio was curt and distracted. I was too sick to be polite. We argued as we were leaving the house. I said to him, ‘Lately, Gabrio, I think you would be happier dead than married to me.’”

She began to cry. Sam moved closer and took her in his arms. “Elisa, we all say things we don’t mean when we’re sick and upset.”

“Do you know how this one sentence has come back to haunt me? In the car…Gabrio finally realized I had reached a point where I was thinking of leaving him. So…as Ramon slept he finally broke down and told me about Martin, about his investigations, about my parents and his belief they had been murdered.

“He was angry at me for forcing his confession. I was angry at him for keeping…the truth to himself, but at least I finally knew what it was that had taken him so far from me.”

She made a visible effort to pull herself together. “As we drove, rain had begun, and the higher…we climbed…” She took a deep, shaky breath. “The worse it became. The car kept stalling and getting stuck, until we were afraid to drive farther. Our roads…are bad in the best of weather. You have no idea how bad they can be in the rain. Hours later we stopped by the…side of the road. We knew we couldn’t reach the village that night in the rain, in the dark.

“Everything, the truth…the fact he had kept it to himself and treated me like a child, the storm…We were exhausted; I was feeling sicker, and Gabrio and I were hardly speaking. Even Ramon, who was awake by then…was upset.”

He stroked her hair. When she was calmer, she began again.